All We Knew Was to Farm
Subtitle: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1919-1941 (Revisiting Rural America)
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: April 10, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780801863189
Subjects: American history: from c 1900 -; Economic history; Women's studies; Inter-war period, 1918-1939; History: American; Employment Of Women; Farm Management; Business & Economics; History - U.S.; Women farmers; Southeastern & South Atlantic states; USA; Labor; United States - 20th Century/Depression; Women & Business; Women's Studies - History; History / United States / General; Technology; Agriculture - General; Appalachian Region
First sentence: In many ways this book is a tribute to my roots in a rural upcountry community.
Description: "In the years after World War I, people of the upcountry South found their world rapidly changing. These changes brought mixed results, but the years between the world wars marked a turning point in the struggle of upcountry women to shape their own lives. New industry and the intervening hand of big government, intruding on once insular communities, forced new choices and redefined the roles of women in this region.".

"In All We Knew Was to Farm, Melissa Walker examines these critical developments, depicting the southern farm woman's confrontation with modern America. Drawing on personal interviews, archives, family papers, and contemporary government records, Walker reconstructs the stories of rural women dealing with bewildering and unsettling change. Some of them, Walker finds, were forced by the constraints of race and class to choose the best of a bad set of options.

Others adapted to change by becoming partners in farm operations, adopting the roles of consumers and homemakers, taking off-farm jobs, or leaving the land. The material lives of rural upcountry women improved dramatically by midcentury; yet in becoming middle class, Walker concludes, they found their lives both broadened and circumscribed."--BOOK JACKET.